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From fashion magazine covers and hooking up with Leonardo DiCaprio… to prison bars – Life coaching’s Instagram showcase and the reality that led to exploitation and prostitution
She even was photographed having fun with Hollywood superstar Leonardo DiCaprio , she confirmed in interviews that she is in a relationship with him and hung out with powerful bankers, businessmen and politicians. But underneath her life sprinkled with plenty of gold dust, Kat would create a dark, nightmarish, psychological thriller world.
Fast forward to 2024. Cat Torres is incarcerated in a Brazilian prison. He has been convicted of trafficking , but also of keeping women as slaves. In a very rare move, US and Brazilian judicial authorities are asking the BBC to interview Torres in prison. They believe that some of her victims will be motivated to speak up. More than 40 women have so far reported being victimized by Torres, but most refuse to testify because they are afraid of her, or are too traumatized to deal with her. Kat Torres herself says that she is innocent and that she is surprised by “the lies that so many people tell”. She tells reporters that they are liars, that she herself is like Jesus Christ, but they see her as the devil. And the investigation continues.
A career as a top model and as an actress was not enough for Torres. So, he would give it up and become an Instagram influencer . Very successful. Her account, which focused on wellness and personal development, had more than 1.2 million followers . Her self-help videos offered advice on relationships, wellness, business success and spirituality – including hypnosis, meditation and exercise programs.
For $150 plus, subscribers to the channel could unlock the service which offered them exclusive video chats with Torres. There, the former model claimed she would solve any of their problems as she claimed to be able to see the future. To the most “loyal” customers, Torres would reveal that she is into magic and that she knows all-powerful spells and curses…
“She must be crazy, or a fraud ,” one might say. Her former roommate in New York, Lazer Tueski, says that Torres’ Hollywood associates (in his view, Torres was a sugar babe or companion of powerful men and Hollywood celebrities) “introduced” her to a powerful hallucinogenic drug, the ayahuasca . Ever since she started using it, Torres has never been the same. She gave it all up and turned to “spiritual pursuits” while devoting herself to her Instagram channel.
At least 14,000 , according to the FBI, used the subscription service to receive Kat’s video advice, or chat with her. Most, it seems, believed everything she told them and followed her advice. After all, Kat was famous, she was a friend or lover of famous people and she was successful. What could possibly go wrong?
How he turned fans into slaves
One of Torres’ former clients, Amanda, who now lives in Brasilia, says he manipulated her into making her feel special. “All my doubts, my questions, my decisions: I always consulted her first, so that we could make decisions together.”
Katyusha Torres Soares – as is her full name – had inspired millions of people with her success story and was now developing into an international model of a person who offered help and guidance. The reality, however, was dark: She used her promises and false words to charm people – mostly women – who she saw as being in a vulnerable position. He targeted them, in order to put them in a horrible world of slavery and sexual exploitation.
Amanda, like other followers, say that they quickly found themselves psychologically – and not only – isolated from friends and family and turned into helpless beings, capable of doing whatever Torres asked.
Ana, a student at Boston University, was another of Kat’s clients. In 2019, after intensive “mentoring,” Torres asked her to move to New York to work for her as an intern. To take care of her pets, cook, wash and clean for her, for a fee of about $2,000 a month.
Hoping to be given a chance to escape an abusive relationship that followed a violent childhood, she accepted. When he arrived in New York, however, things were not as he expected. The apartment was appallingly dirty, she was forced to sleep on a couch stained with cat urine, and Torres demanded that she be available to her at all times. He slept very little, was never paid, and the demands, as well as the psychological violence, were constantly increasing.
When Ana escaped, Kat kidnapped three other women. Leticia Maia, a Brazilian who has been “life coaching” since she was 14, Desiree Freitas , a Brazilian who lived in Germany and another, who preferred to remain anonymous and is called “Sol”. They moved into a five-bedroom house in Texas, where Torres lived with her husband, 21-year-old Zach from California. Along with them, at least 4 other women had been recruited, but they backed out at the last moment.
This “group”, Torres called her “witch clan” to her followers on Instagram and other social networks.
Torres convinced Leticia to abandon her studies, as she did with Desiree. In just a few weeks, threatening her with “witchcraft”, he forced Desiree to work as a stripper and, if she refused, he would have to reimburse her for her flight tickets, accommodation costs, furniture for her room, as well as … magic that Torres had done for her. Desiree says she was horrified by what she would have to pay, but also because at the time she believed that Torres, who was threatening to curse her with a magical spell, had spiritual powers.
He did something similar with Sol, who was hired to do tarot readings and yoga classes, but was forced into prostitution. As the conditions at home were horrible, with the women not even allowed to speak to each other and asking permission even to go to the bathroom, Sol knew that an even more horrible future awaited her when she overheard Torres talking to client and promise to “punish” her by sending her to work as a prostitute in Brazil. With the help of an ex, who had been looking for her, she managed to escape.
In the meantime, Torres had begun to become more pushy with the other women she used as slaves and to show off her husband’s weapons through her social media accounts. Desiree worked grueling hours as a stripper, but that wasn’t enough. So, he asked her to work as a prostitute. When Desiree refused, Torres’ husband gave her a “surprise ride” to a shooting range with his guns. Frightened, Desiree finally gave in.
Like all of Torres’ slaves, Desiree had to make a certain profit every day. Initially, it was $1,000, which increased to $3,000 a day. If they didn’t “catch” the limit, they weren’t allowed to go home that night, they say. “I ended up sleeping on the street quite a few times because I couldn’t make ends meet,” Desiree told the BBC.which saw bank statements showing he transferred more than $21,000 to Torres’ account in June and July 2022 alone. He says he was forced to hand over a significantly higher amount in cash.
There was no turning back, as it wasn’t just indirect threats with weapons and psychological violence and isolation. Because prostitution is illegal in Texas, Torres threatened to report Desiree to the police if she ever talked about wanting to stop.
Unraveling the tangle
Back in Brazil that year, relatives and friends of Desiree and Leticia, after months of losing contact with them, launched social media campaigns to find them. The two women had disappeared and no one knew where they were. There was only one clue: The last person who had spoken to them was Torres.
Desiree’s relatives were almost certain she had been murdered, and along with those of Leticia, they made desperate pleas for her to come home from the media and social media. As the Instagram page @searchingDesirrê gained momentum, the story began to “pick up” in Brazilian news outlets.
That’s when Ana, who had escaped Torres’ clutches in 2019, saw the story on the news. Immediately, “bells” rang for her and she assumed “that Torres was keeping other girls” . Together with Sol – with whom they met – Ana appealed to the police authorities, even going as far as the FBI, reporting Torres and explaining that “she is a very dangerous woman who threatened to kill us”. The complaints of the two women and the information they gave to the police authorities were simply ignored.
Five months passed with Sol and Ana pleading with the police to arrest Torres, seemingly convinced that she was forcibly holding the two missing women, and the case gained increasing publicity. Horrified by the extent of the case in Brazil, Torres moved to Maine and forced Desiree and Leticia to upload videos on social media. In them, they were almost unrecognizable, their hair dyed platinum and asking people to stop looking for them, denying that they were being held captive.
That’s when an officer “interrogated” Torres via Facetime, convincing her to check on the two women, if only so. Nothing came of it, and in November 2022, police finally convinced Kat and the other two women to turn themselves in to the Franklin County Sheriff’s Office in Maine.
Detective David Davol, who interrogated Torres, Desiree and Leticia, told the BBC that he and his colleagues immediately knew something disturbing was going on. They noted a mistrust of police authorities, isolation and, most notably, the two women’s reluctance to speak without first getting Torres’ permission.
“Human traffickers are not always like in the movies, where you have… a gang that kidnaps people. It’s much more common for it to be someone you trust,” explains the detective, citing UN data that human trafficking is one of the fastest-growing crimes, estimated to generate $150 billion in profits annually worldwide. She believes social media gives her a platform she can thrive on, making it much easier for traffickers to find and groom their victims.
Investigations proceeded quickly and, by December 2022, the two women had returned safely to Brazil. Torres had been arrested and extradited to Brazil to stand trial.
‘I’m innocent’
Last April, the BBC team received a rare court order to interview Torres in a Brazilian prison – the first media interview with her since her arrest. Torres had already spent 18 months in prison awaiting a court decision in Desiree’s case. Shortly after, he would be sentenced by a Brazilian judge to eight years in prison for trafficking Désirée and being a slave. He concluded that he had lured the young woman to the US for the purpose of sexual exploitation. Brazilian authorities are investigating at least 20 more complaints from women.
Calm and smiling, Torres insisted to the BBC television crew that she is completely innocent, denying that any woman had ever lived with her or that she had ever forced anyone to participate in sex work. “When I saw the people testifying, they lied so much. So many lies that at one point I couldn’t stop laughing ,” he said.
“People say I’m a fake guru, but at the same time, they also say that… ‘She’s dangerous to society because she can change people’s minds with her words.'” When reporters confronted her with the evidence in her possession, Torres changed. She became hostile, accusing them of lying too. “You choose to believe what you choose to believe. I can tell you that I am Jesus. And you can see Jesus or you can see the devil, that’s all. It’s your choice. It’s your mind.”
The investigation into Torres’ actions continues as her victims try to recover from the horrors they endured.“I haven’t fully recovered yet, I’ve had a difficult year. I was sexually exploited, enslaved and imprisoned. I hope my story serves as a warning,” says Desiree, who wrote a book about her experiences. And he stresses that he hopes the world will recognize that Torres’ actions constitute a serious crime and not some “Instagram drama”.
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